Computer systems often control or mediate access to physical and virtual resources by authenticating a user before allowing him to access the resource. For example, a user may have to “log in” to a website, database or online game network before being permitted to retrieve information or participate in the game. An organization that provides the protected resource may levy a subscription fee or other charge before granting access. A common difficulty for such organizations is that an authorized user may “lend” his access credentials (e.g., his username and password) to someone else, allowing the second person to use the resource without paying. Such lending of credentials often violates the policies or contracts of the organization providing the resources, and deprives that organization of revenue, security, or other things of value.
The problem of account sharing can be subdivided into a number of aspects, including detecting excess users, and dealing with them. The inventors' patent application Ser. No. 12/547,423, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,285,658 describes a method for detecting the unauthorized sharing of accounts used to access electronic or online resources. The invention described herein describes several ways for dealing with such unauthorized sharing once it has been detected (by any means that detection might be accomplished).
The prior art in this area identifies sharing using manual methods, and responds to that sharing with ad-hoc manual processes. Our invention is better because:                The detection of sharing, and the subsequent remediation of the sharing, can be clone in an automated way, without requiring human intervention. Automating this process makes it less costly, more deterministic, and allows it to happen far more rapidly than is possible with manual methods.        The remediation of sharing happens according to a set pattern of rules, which can be more effective than judgment-based or error-prone manual processes.        